I LIVE MY TRAITS ON SCREEN

Slightly unfortunate in her career trajectory,with two of her projects,Abhay Deol’s Basra and Mani Ratnam’s Madras Talkies,shelved and delayed respectively,in Mishra’s latest,Singh plays an aspiring singer from Delhi,who travels to Mumbai for fame and money. She gets kidnapped by a gangster,in a case of mistaken identity,which results in Irrfan’s character,an investment banker,risking his life to rescue her.

Arrested by Singh’s charms,the gangster faces a dilemma when his wife threatens to walk out on him if he does not collect the ransom. “I set out to make a love story,but it was more interesting to wrap it in the guise of a thriller,” says Mishra,who has reportedly attempted to take-off from his 1996 thriller,Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin. “It is not a sequel and is a tippier look at love,” he adds. On casting his muse,the filmmaker responds,“This is the most real character she has been cast in a long time.”

Singh agrees. Brought up in a middle class Delhi family,she has a sensitive and vulnerable personality. “I get to live my traits on screen. I like roles where women are realistically portrayed. Not too linear or virginally nice,in the conventional sense. There are not many directors who cast women like this,” says Singh,who feels that she has experimented with a range of emotions in the film. She has even hummed a few lines for the title track,Yeh Saali Zindagi “after being forced to” by Mishra.

Quick to expunge suggestions of leaning towards certain camps in the industry,she feels fortunate to work with people she “gets along with”.” But she knows she cannot rely on Mishra forever and has become more proactive. Her future projects include debutant Kapil Sharma’s untitled film with John Abraham and the Akshay Kumar starrer Desi Boys. Also in the pipeline,is another film with Mishra. “It’s on sexual exploitation at the workplace,” reveals the actor,getting back to the promotion spree.